I am the wife of a Belknap County Nursing Home resident. I depend heavily on the nurses, aides, and support workers who care for my husband, and on the county commissioners who monitor the nursing home and its dedicated staff.

Dave Pollak has taken the trouble to familiarize himself with this facility, and I have confidence in his ability to oversee the needs here. Please support Dave Pollak for Belknap County Commissioner.

I've been told under no uncertain terms by law enforcement leadership that our medical marijuana law is all about legalization and that there is no medicinal value to cannabis. Witness the effects of its use by a cancer patient and you'll see the truth.

Our children have easier access to cannabis and other, more dangerous drugs, than they do to hard liquor. That tells me that we're not doing it right. Allowing the black market to regulate who has access to cannabis is what is happening right now and dealers often have cocaine, heroin and other substances for sale. If there is a "gateway," it's the dealer who provides it.

It's time to take a conservative approach on this issue. We could easily reduce the size of government and spending by simply re-staking our position on the "drug war." Reduce the size of our prisons and give people access to treatment rather than destroying lives and paying for incarceration and we will move in a direction that will bolster our economy and help restore our faith in government.

On Sunday morning, September 28 at 8:30-8:45 a.m. I was just going out to my yard with my 5-year-old great-granddaughter so she could play for a while. Her 2-year-old dog "Koko" sneaked out the door and ran across the front lawn chasing something and I called to her but she did not listen. As I walked down the driveway to try and get her to come back up, she ran out onto Route 140 and a car struck and killed her.

The person who hit her never stopped or came back to see if all was alight. What really upset me is the fact that I have this child who saw what happened to her dog. She stood in the driveway crying unconditionally because she had seen what happened. She does not understand how a person could be like that.

I would like the person to get in touch with The Laconia Daily Sun and apologize to this little girl. Koko was her best friend and buddy.

On September 16, President Obama publicly addressed the Ebola outbreak that was ravaging three Western African nations at that time. In his comments the president called for worldwide coordination to fight the disease while proclaiming the chances of an outbreak in the United States "very low." Recent events in Texas have rendered the president's prediction ephemerally inaccurate.

We now have two confirmed cases of the disease in Texas among health care professionals who cared for a deceased Ebola patient, Thomas Duncan, and health authorities in Dallas are tracking more than 120 people who may have had contact with that victim and the diseased workers. The president has not ordered any travel restrictions with the Western African countries where the disease has killed more than 4,000 people, including more than 200 health care workers.

Travelers are asked questions at the gate and temperatures are taken. This protocol is deemed prophylactic even though we don't know if Ebola can be spread by those who are currently asymptomatic. The disease has a 21-day incubation period, we do seem to know that much. The government tells us via its director of the Center for Disease Control that travel restrictions or a ban would be ineffective in controlling the disease, using an unconvincing excuse that we would not be able to get aid to those countries if we restricted travel, an assertion patently incredible on its face. That comes from a man who can't tell you scientifically if the disease can be transmitted through coughing or sneezing.

I wonder if Mr. Duncan would have infected anyone in Dallas if he had been questioned more carefully before entering the country (he had actual physical contact with an Ebola victim in Africa before flying here), or if he had been quarantined prior to traveling?

In slightly less recent times we have seen the ineffectiveness of our government at controlling the outbreak of TB, the entero virus, and other communicable diseases that have been transmitted through our southern border, largely due to intentionally lax border security and the subsequent relocation of tens of thousands of illegal aliens to all 50 states by the INS, ironically a division of the Department of Homeland Security. The Department of Homeland Security doesn't seem to be terribly effective at having control over who comes into our country and federal authority doesn't seem to be much interested in trying and deporting those who have no right to be here in the first place. I wonder if that might be because the leadership in both the Democrat and Republican parties seemed hell bent on passing an amnesty bill a mere eight weeks ago, in spite of the fact that more than 60 percent of our citizens are against such preferential treatment for illegal aliens?

The executive branch of the federal government has the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security at its command to protect U.S. citizens from the deleterious effects of pathogens that could harm us, illegal aliens who have no right to be here under federal statute, and otherwise legal travelers who are infected with deadly disease.

We taxpayers expend multiple tens of billions of dollars to fund their operations. The employees of these agencies get all sorts of bonuses and other benefits that we in the private sector can only dream of. Yet it is remarkable how reluctant each department seems about doing its job. I wonder if that might be a reflection of the fact that our Commander in Chief doesn't seem much interested in his constitutional duty to "take care that the

laws be faithfully executed..."?

Perhaps we taxpayers should have all of this in mind when we go to the polls on Nov. 4.

Just read your letter concerning a recent obituary in The Daily Sun. Are you aware that most obituaries are submitted by the family of the deceased? If they wish to celebrate his dedication to a sport he loved, then why denigrate it?